You Are My Heaven
by findingfireflies
Summary: "Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it."


The first thing she felt was shock, it seeped into her veins and fled through her body like parasitic venom. Then came the paralysis, not of her limbs or the rhythmic muscles of her heart but of her stagnant mind. They said grief came in seven steps but for Lydia it came all at once flooding over like a wave. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Her first thought was the pills stashed away under her bed in a quaint box; they were to be taken under stringent supervision and always as a last resort. One pill and she'd be blissfully free, calm, light, maybe she'd see him again, and maybe this would all be some terrifying nightmare. Denial slowly spread after, he wasn't supposed to die in a car accident, he was superhuman, strong, fast, and agile. Just last night she had listened to the strong heartbeat vibrating under her carmine curls as she drifted off to sleep. Strong like a metronome, it couldn't be erased with a few scraps of steel. He couldn't be gone.

I do still love you.

I do

The words would flee her chapped lips, as she lay cradled in bed, catatonic and seemingly inert. Often Allison would visit, and Stiles came regularly they'd try to rouse make false promises of him being alive. Lydia could see it, it all a ploy, Jackson wasn't going to come back he was dead, gone. How was she supposed to go on? It wasn't a matter of weakness, of needing someone to feel whole, but it was a product of habit. Over the past four months they had spent every waking minute together, there were promises made, he was supposed to take her to junior prom, they had made plans to go away during spring break, they were even planning to go away to the same colleges. All of it seemed pointless without him; all the plans she had made were for a future that no longer existed.

Jackson was confused, the impact had hit him hard eviscerating his beating heart, at first he had felt excruciating pain and then there was just darkness. At first when he awoke, he tried screaming to get attention. As he watched himself to get rushed to surgery and the nine agonizing hours surgeons spent poring over his already dead body. He didn't understand it, why was he still there? If he was dead wasn't he supposed to move on? Then he thought of the last thing he'd seen before the light had left his eyes. Her. The bright emerald eyes that stared into his soul in the late of the night, or the perfumed smell of her scarlet locks as his strong arms wrapped around her torso, he couldn't leave without her.

Watching her suffer was hard. Often he'd want to close the distance between them with just a touch and although he was only a few feet away her touch was universes away from him. Sometimes he swore she knew he was there when he'd touch her face a gasp and shudder would leave her lips, he wanted to wipe her tears away, he wanted to hold her like he had that night and never her let her go, yet with his constraints he could be nothing more than an observer. He watched her graduate high school and he swore when she walked across that stage she caught his eye and a smile perched on her beautiful lips. The day she won her field's medal, she got bleary-eyed choking out the words of thanks to him for making her stronger, for pushing her like she had pushed him. Her wedding day had been hard, but as she had walked down the aisle he had held her hand giving her away to the best man possible for her. After that he left her for a while, perhaps that was selfishness on his part but she had been his for so long he couldn't let her go.

He returned after 60 years for her, a cold autumn night while she was reading to her grand daughter. Lydia wasn't his Lydia anymore, the strands of strawberry blonde had turned silvery grey, the full lips were emaciated, wrinkles covered her fair skin, but she still had her wit, her charm, and her hidden kindness. All those little things he had fallen in love with. He could tell she was slowly slipping away from this life and coming to his, Pancreatic Cancer, and it was getting worse by the day. Jackson didn't want pain for her, he wanted her to come to him in peace, and so she did two days later.

They said she died in her sleep with a smile perched on her lips, he was there for her and the minute she left her body her silvery tresses became sparkling red and the youth returned in a wave. She was glowing, but then again she always glowed in his presence because she was his angel.

"You waited" were her first words to him, he took her hand finally feeling her warmth after seventy long years of separation.

"Of course, I waited, you are my heaven, Lydia Martin"


End file.
